Howard Carter, the famed archaeologist who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun, got a Google Doodle Wednesday on what would be his 138th birthday.

Carter was born May 9, 1874, in London. When he was just 17 years old, the Egypt Exploration Fund sent him to help excavate the tombs of Beni Hasan, where he quickly showed an aptitude for archaeology.

After years of work in Egypt, marked by long stretches without progress and interrupted by the First World War, Carter unearthed the tomb of the boy king, Tutankhamun, in 1922. It was the first time a pharaoh’s tomb and treasures had been discovered by a modern-era archaeologist. Carter and his sponsor, Lord Carnarvon, were the first people to enter the tomb in more than 3,000 years.

“The splendor of the tomb and its rich furnishings within it revealed a Golden Age of arts and crafts equal to any other period of ancient times,” The New York Times said years afterward.

Famously, several of Carter’s team — including Lord Carnarvon — died mysteriously over the next few years, although a 2002 study found their death rate was statistically normal.

After finding the tomb — “the most dramatic discovery in the history of archaeology,” as the Times put it — Carter retired from archaeology and began working as an agent for museums and collectors.

On March 3, 1939, Carter succumbed to lymphoma at his home in London. He was 64 years old.

[np-related]

Google creates dozens of doodles every year, though many are country specific. May 6, for example, there was a doodle for both the French and Greek elections. May 7, Google created a doodle for Władysław Reymont’s 145th Birthday, which rolled out only in Poland.